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If you look at the above photo, this is one of the Big Four ocean liners, presumed in the postcard to be Adriatic. I'm pretty sure that this is NOT Adriatic, and is instead a picture of one of her sister ships, perhaps Celtic, Cedric, or Baltic. Adriatic had distinctive windows in her forward superstructure not apparent in the above photo. To show you what I am talking about, look @ the photo below:

Now, this is a picture of Adriatic. I always wondered: Why is part of Adriatic's promenade enclosed, Titanic-style, but was not re-implemented on Adriatic's sisters Celtic, Cedric, or Baltic? Perhaps they were in service before she was and didn't need the improvements? I don't know. Maybe someone here can take a stab at this topic.

Just wanted to bring this up. Now I have to go back and delete all my "Adriatic" photos that are not real pictures of the ship

Well, alone of the Big Four, Adriatic had the goal-post type derricks on her deck which are clearly shown in the first photo but not visible in the second; for that reason, IMHO, the first picture is Adriatic. The second may well be her, too, but later in her career; that would account for the extra lifeboats and maybe for the enclosed promenade.

Richard de Kerbrech's wonderful book Ships of the White Star Line makes it pretty clearly that the promenade was enclosed after she entered service (maybe during her 1919 refitting?). The enclosure is clearly not present in a photo taken at her maiden Southampton departure in 1907, but clearly is present in the others, and the text says that "later in her career she alone of the four ships had the fore end of her promenade deck glassed in with large windows." Since both the derricks and the enclosed promenade, then, were unique to Adriatic, both photos above seem to be of her.

That makes a lot more sense now -- I find that the Big Four look so much alike that I get confused over which ship I am really looking at. This is unlike the Olympics which I easily tell which one is Olympic, Titanic, and Britannic -- Google can't fool me there, but with the Big Four, Google got me.

I want your opinion:
1. Which White Star ship do you like the best and why?
2. Could a rebuild of the Big Four be possible nowadays? Imagine the photo opportunities...
3. If White Star Line fought the IMM takeover, would they still be around today?
4. Which ship of the Big Four is your favorite?

I really don't have favorites, either among the Big Four or among the White Star fleet as a whole.

As far as IMM is concerned, it wasn't IMM that did White Star in, it was Royal Mail (in addition to outside factors). White Star was consistently profitable throughout the IMM years, even when IMM as a whole was not. It was the combined effect of the Great Depression and U.S. immigration restrictions (which severely affected all lines) and the financial drain of White Star's profits to prop up other companies in the Royal Mail Group in the late '20's (after IMM sold White Star), that put White Star into the red.

Yeah I knew that Royal Mail ate up White Star's profits to help keep the enterprise going, but it ultimately failed. The 1000 foot Oceanic would have been a nice ship if only White Star had the money to finish her. Royal Mail (along with the depression) really screwed up White Star Line in the later years, but Cunard saved them from going unde by merging with them in 1934 to finish the RMS Queen Mary.

But back to the Big Four -- would a cruise ship rebuild be feasible? A reconstruction in the sense more suitable for cruising purposes.Basically, remove the cramped liner accommodation and make it more open and suitable for cruise passengers. You could have an open-air pool aft of the funnels, with a bar. To incorporate balconies, you could enclose part of the promenade and make those into balconies. You could up-engine them to make them a bit faster, say 20 knots. Expansive sun decks would be present. Perhaps remove two of the masts (the ones directly forward and aft of the funnels) and connect the seperate superstructures into one large one, to expand interior space for amenities. Lifeboats to be placed directly above balconies on deck.

In my opinion, size doesn't really matter, and since the Big Four were built as liners (not cruise ships), open-ocean performance and safety is assured (much safer than today's cruise ships). The interior of these four ships could be completely redone to suit their itinerary. Here is what I see: Celtic and Cedric could hold down the Caribbean cruise services, while Baltic takes to the Norwegian fjords for northern excursions, and Adriatic holds down Meditterrean cruises. Of course, they would throw in a couple repositioning crossings in-between cruises, but I think that the Big Four-turned-cruise ships could be profitable. What do you guys think?

Here's another mysterious picture. This one is not of Adriatic (I know what you guys are thinking...I should have named the thread to "Big Four woes...")
This one is of Celtic, the first ship in the class.

Here she is (or not)

This upper left picture I found told me that this is Celtic. In my opinion I don't think this is the case as in Adriatic where she was reconstructed later. For comparison, on the right is an actual picture of Celtic. Can someone enlighten me as to whether the upper left pic is of Celtic? As a note, how do you guys tell the four ships of the Big Four apart from one another?

I can only concur with Mark Baber that the first RP postcard is that of Adriatic. Sometime last year an autograph dealer, Profiles In History offered two great, authenticated, Titanic related signed items. One being a great studio image of Rosa Abbot and the other being the same image of Ariatic (top) as seen in post #1...signed E.J. Smith. I did share the image on the old ET forum, perhaps someone here can locate?

To clear up the confusion about the thread, what I did is delete the earlier post because the images were still not working. That is why there is confusion among ET board members. I deleted it on purpose -- to fix the images and reupload the response. I hope this clears up the confusion.

NOTE: The #13 post you see above Mark's comment on this page is the correct one.

What is going on here? When I posted the message right above this one, ADeblois' message above it contained two photos of Celtic; the email version of that message is the same. Now those pictures are gone and there are four different ones there. How did that happen?

In addition, there's an icon on the thread title which says that three messages have been deleted from this thread. Three?